One of the galleries in Moesgaard Museum is allocated to Aarhus University – colloquially referred to as the exhibition lab. For students at all levels and professors at CAS, Aarhus University, the gallery offers a possibility to communicate their research to the wider museum audiences. For the museum audiences, the exhibition lab offers a glimpse into current research topics. Museum employees such as the exhibition designers and craftsmen are integral to all exhibitions. Ideally, two exhibitions will be on display per year; one of them is the student’s exhibition, which is the outcome of the course Knowledge dissemination (‘Vidensformidling’) on the fourth semester of the BA in anthropology. The other exhibition is normally a dissemination component of a research project anchored in anthropology, archaeology or one of the MA-tracks based in Moesgaard.
The course Knowledge dissemination (‘Vidensformidling’) has been a part of the BA curriculum since 2008. During the course, the students are introduced to the art of producing anthropological knowledge as well as its dissemination to broader audiences. The course is structured around the making of an exhibition, which normally is open to the museum audiences in the Exhibition lab in Moesgaard Museum from the end of June until September. The students are divided into six groups, where work with a given topic defined by the course lecturers. They carry out a small fieldwork and are develop conceptually and practically their part of the exhibition. The course is different from most other courses in the BA program, insofar as it includes both conceptual and highly practical tasks. Besides the supervision of the lecturers, the students are assisted by various museum experts such as exhibition designers, artisans and AV-technicians.